The GOP and corporate interests have waged a propaganda campaign over the past few decades with one of the primary messages being “You can’t trust the government.” They expanded from there to include “You can’t trust experts.” (What do they know about anything?) and “You can’t trust schools” (They are all failing.) and “You can’t trust teachers.” (They are just in it for the money. They need to be easier to fire.) and “You can’t trust government employees.” and many, many more of our social institutions. They didn’t even bother with “You can trust labor unions,” because they had already sold that trope to workers. Imagine that, working people were convinced that labor unions, the only force that could oppose the wage suppression efforts of corporations and their hired government, were not to be trusted. Amazing. Equally amazing is that these people are referring to them selves as “conservatives,” you know, those people who support our basic institutions and social structures over most anything else.

But, when they said “You Can’t Trust the Government” what they really meant was ““You Can’t Trust the GOP to Run the Government.” A case in point, one of many, is the Secretary of State of Mexico was visiting and had meetings scheduled at the White House. A member of “The Media” (Oh, “You Can’t Trust the Mainstream Media.”) called the U.S. State Department to find out why the Mexican Sect’y wasn’t meeting with our SOS; they were told “We were unaware he was visiting.”

Think about this: a political organization which has a platform that you cannot trust the government gets in charge of said government, which do you think they are more likely to do:
a. perform their duties to the best of their ability, or
b. mess everything up so people will be more disgusted and more untrusting of their government.

If you think the answer is “a” then the “best of their ability” is woefully short of the mark and constitutes a danger to all of us. If you thought the answer is “b” then we have elected gremlins to our highest offices.

Another question that comes up is, then, whom should we trust then? Other than the same people who say we shouldn’t trust the experts, the government, the media, and by doing so, make themselves into some sort of experts on credibility – who, according to them, should therefore not be trusted.

Unfortunately, the “other” party, the one that still trust experts, has turned itself into a neoliberal party. We need a new party, with a platform focussing on ordinary people and against the people who have captured our government.

And the frustrating thing is that the supposed ‘best’ of the neoliberal Democratic Party … people like Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Keith Ellison … continue to believe in, and call for … the redemption of the Democratic Party.

They’ll have to move it some to even get to a place where it is redeemable.

I am not convinced it is irredeemable pr redeemable, I am convinced it is huge with a hugh historical inertia behind it. This makes creating a new party a major, major (major!) lift that most would avoid until there is no other choice.

I fear that by the time decent and insightful democrats accept that ‘there is no other choice’ we may be beyond choice. Not a doomsday projection but a growing concern. The DNC election of Tom Perez says it all. We need to move toward the ‘new’ now. Probably.